


Lemma

by Triskaidekalogue



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancestors, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 07:23:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triskaidekalogue/pseuds/Triskaidekalogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some say loyalties are forged in fire. Some say in ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lemma

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ferrrox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferrrox/gifts).



> [Re](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mimicre/pseuds/mimicre) read. Re rapidly revised. Writer rebuffed random recommendations -- remaining wrongness, reasonless resoluteness's result.
> 
> [ferrrox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ferrrox) illustrated a scene, to my great delight; with permission, I have included the lovely result below.

I.

The strange troll doesn't flinch when you bring your claws to her throat. Doesn't flinch when the tremor in your hand skips the sharpened points against her skin. You think you can hear a quaver in her voice, though -- or is the shaking your own?

You refocus for a moment.

" -- your boundary markers," the troll is saying. "I promise, I don't mean you any harm. I was only here to forage." She shifts a little in your hold. "Your hands... they're freezing. Are you all right?"

The symbol embroidered on her vest isn't one you recognize. But she's not even carrying a weapon, and though it's near dayfall the sack she'd dropped -- empty as a cullstray's belly -- has a dry reek of plants and crushed beetlegrubs, not even the fat savory kind.

"Just go," you rasp. "Stay away."

She remains unresisting as you half-push, half-drag her toward the creek that bounds your territory. A shove away from crossing it she stops and turns to regard you with curious eyes.

"You _were_ shivering..." she says. She takes you in with a sweeping gaze. "I see. Those pelts are too badly rent to give much protection against this weather. Are they your warmest clothes, hunter?"

The fur had looked so warm on the fangbeast it'd come from. It had been your biggest kill since your lusus had died. You'd been so proud. And relieved.

You can't quite summon up the energy to rebuff this obvious insult to your skill.

"I said _go_."

The stranger straddles the creek for a moment, then straightens up on the other side. She's still looking at you.

"We have clothes, me and my companion," she says. "Gl'bgolyb knows, it's the one necessity we've brought more than enough of. I can bring you some."

" _Charity?_ " You recoil and cast a quick glance over yourself -- no, you are clearly fatter and better muscled than the other troll. And she must be a terrible hunter if she's foraging. Not even successfully foraging, at that.

She spreads her hands placatingly. "No, no charity. You can see I'm a stranger to this region, and don't know the land or its beasts well enough to eat well. I propose a trade."

"Clothes for food," you say guardedly.

"I thought clothes for advice, maybe, but" -- she smiles -- "whichever suits you."

The wind chooses this moment to pick up its pace. You bite your lip hard enough to draw blood and grit out, "Done. Trade here. Tomorrow at sunset."

"Here, tomorrow at sunset," she agrees. "But for now..."

You blame the graying sky for your slow reflexes. The stranger unties her long shawl, bundles it up, and tosses it to you across the creek -- you catch it automatically -- but before you can react any further she's gone, nothing but a rustle in the tall grass.

  


She's there at the appointed time. You're there too -- curled up hidden in an abandoned digger burrow, shawl around shoulders. You watch her search for you.

She doesn't find you. She almost doesn't find the dried meat and the grubs you left for her in her own forgotten foraging bag. In the end she catches sight of it as she stoops to put down the bundle in her arms.

You think she's smiling.

After she absconds you wiggle out of the burrow. She's left her bundle on a pad of grass. Opening it you find shirt, sash, trousers. All of it -- even the wrapping -- is knit from some kind of thick sturdy wool.

A fair trade, you conclude, and decide that you won't chase this stranger out if she should ever stumble into your territory again.

  


  
II.

It's coming down sleet and hail when the hunter shows up on your doorstep, or what would be your doorstep if you were living in a constructed hive rather than the outer chambers of a small cave system. As it is she practically falls over the raised lip of the opening, and hits the ground with a thump that sends ice and water spraying through the air. You are speechless. You are frozen to the spot.

You actually don't recognize her at first. She's soaked uniformly dark, except where some bits of ice have refused to relinquish their grip; her hair, or possibly some kind of hood, is obscuring her horns and face. When she staggers up against the wall, though, a piece of cloth slides from her shoulders, and the familiar pattern of its fringe is stark against the pale stone underfoot.

It's your shawl.

"...hunter?" you say.

"No -- harm -- " the intruder wheezes, barely audible against the drum of hail just outside. "We -- traded -- "

A coughing fit cuts her off. You drop the perpetual oxidation chamber you were trying to put together and hurry to her side.

"Here, here... let's get out of the wind, yes?"

You lead her to the recess where you've been sleeping and sit her on the cover of your shallow makeshift recuperacoon.

"My hive -- " she begins.

You hold up a finger. "Do you have dry clothes underneath? Could you take off the wet things while you talk, please?"

The hunter hesitates for a moment, but she seems old enough to understand the dangers of the bone-cold, and sure enough the sodden shapeless layers start coming off one by one until she's down to a long shirt that's dry enough to show color: jade on black, one of the old clothes you'd left for her after that first encounter.

"My hive caved in," she says when she's done, and squishes the pile to the side, out of the way. It clinks, incongruously; you suspect weaponry. "Other hideouts all flooded."

You've got your pack pulled open on your lap, but you look up at this. "How bad is it?"

"Can't go back in at all." She watches soberly, perching cross-legged, as you rummage through the pack. "I knew you were near. You couldn't know enough to forage very far."

"That's true enough," you say, smiling a little. "Ah, here they are..."

You bring out a couple of the portable oxidation chambers that your son had... acquired from sources unknown, shortly before you'd left the desert for good. They're limited use, but they'll do for heat in a pinch.

You snap the seals on both chambers. "Tuck these under your arms," you tell the hunter. She accepts them a bit dubiously, but does as you say, and allows you to wrap your overrobe around her. "And what about your lusus?"

"Dead. Almost two sweeps."

"I'm sorry."

"I don't see yours either," she points out. There's a hint of fang there, but the lines of her face say sadness, not anger.

"No," you agree. "I do travel with another troll, though, so please don't be alarmed when he comes back."

"Moirail?" she says.

"No, it's..." You give up. "I raised him."

"His lusus died too?"

You opt for the technically true: "You could say that."

There's been a steady _tap, tap_ coming from the deeper caverns for quite some time, but you realize it's been slowly growing louder over the last minute or so. Not stalactite drip, then, but rather --

You stand up. "That will be him, then," you say. "He's been exploring the cave system; I didn't expect him back so soon, but I'll go tell him who you are. No, please don't get up, keep yourself warm..."

The tunnel that leads into the rest of the system is dark as always, but your son's footsteps are drawing closer. You suppose he must have put out his torch optimistically early.

"There's someone visiting us, love," you call into the tunnel. "She's... oh, dear, I did say to stay there and keep warm, you'll -- "

You're looking back at the hunter when something large and bristly surges from the direction of the tunnel and knocks you flat. There's an extremely confusing jumble of moments wherein you are buffeted, clawed, trodden on and shouted at before being pushed entirely out of the scrum and coming up short against a wall. Just as you blink your sight back, one of the snarling voices peters out into a whine that has you clapping your hands over your auriculae.

The stunned stillness that follows is broken by the hunter's cough. She shuffles over, holding a bloody knife, and peers down at you.

"Hungry digger," she says matter-of-factly. "I was too cold to smell it at first -- you should learn that smell too."

She's about to wipe the blood off on the tattered remnants of your overrobe when she stops and gives you an uneasy glance.

"Sorry about your clothes," she mumbles, and goes to wipe her knife on the fallen beast's fur instead.

You laugh, only slightly giddily. "What's there to be sorry for?"

"You didn't attack me -- you let me stay -- "

"You can stay as long as you want," you tell her. "We really _don't_ know what to do in the grasslands. Come, let's get you insulated properly again..."


End file.
